Originally Posted By: hatt
Originally Posted By: Uber_Archetype
Originally Posted By: hatt
If you guess wrong and lose the A10 you lose capability.
True. But like I said, the cost vs. benefit for the A-10 is no longer there. It's become one of those "nice-to-have" things we can't afford to keep around. Too many drawbacks associated with the non-permissive environment threat, and lots of other ways to get the job done better for less cost. Like you said, there won't be any large superpower ground engagements, and that is what is was designed for - killing Russian tanks.
But they're still good at killing Russian tanks that everyone is using. And American equipment we've left all over.
I'm not seeing the cheaper options to fight our likely conflicts. Million $$ missiles? Billion $$ planes? Bullets are cheap. Slow low tech planes built like a tank are cheap.
Even slow, low tech planes cost a LOT of money to keep. The A-10, for example, needs spare parts inventory, trained maintenance personnel, training centers for those personnel, as well as trained operators.
Further, as airplanes age, new structures have to be built (wing spars, fuselage parts, etc.) at several times their original cost (like custom building a frame for a 1973 Chevy, it's going to cost a lot more than when that Chevy was built) and more and more of these parts have to be made from scratch as the airplane ages. That drives up cost/flight hour. That continual increase in cost/flight hour with age is what caused the F-14 to be retired, even though it was replaced by an arguably less capable airplane.
Depending on estimates, the A-10 costs $700-800 million/year to keep in operation. That's not a small amount of money for the USAF. IF you can deliver the same number of bombs/target (and generally, CAS needs bombs these days, not a big gun) using existing platforms, then the calculus becomes dollar/bombs delivered on target.
The DOD is under tremendous financial pressure as weapon systems, troop pay, and other costs, climb while the overall budget remains (in inflation adjusted dollars) flat. So, every branch of the DOD, including the USAF, is looking at "vertical cuts" - eliminating entire platforms, including their support infrastructure of people, facilities, training, supply chain, and procurement.
Cutting 20% of platform, for example, retiring 15 out of 75 B-1 Bombers, doesn't yield a 20% cost savings, it only yields a small savings because the support $$ are unchanged. So, you could cut 20% of the F-16s and only save 5% of the program cost, because training facilities, supply chain, and other overhead aren't reduced, and they are now amortized over a smaller number of aircraft. That actually drives the cost/flight hour up on the remaining aircraft, which takes you in the opposite direction that you wanted initially.
So, the requirement for future aircraft depends on the mission parameters, and the capabilities needed to perform that mission. If, as you claim in your analysis, we will be fighting in low threat environments, then maybe the A-10 makes sense. But if you need to provide capabilities suited to a peer, or near-peer conflict, you need to find the money to fund platforms that work in that high-end conflict.
If those platforms are able to deliver bombs at a similar cost/bomb on target, then there is no need for the A-10, and the vertical cut makes perfect sense. There are literally hundreds of folks in the Pentagon, working with classified information, to make those threat assessments and capability requirements determinations. Those are the folks that should be driving the future procurement for DOD, not politicians, and not the vocal group that favors a particular platform based on emotional attachment to that platform.
Nearly eighty years ago, those same kinds of groups were vocal in their objection to the "new" semi-automatic rifle, caliber 30, M-1. It doesn't work as well as the old rifle, it's more expensive, it won't work in the mud, we already have a great rifle in the 1903 and other arguments.
Yet, when the M-1 hit the beaches of Normandy, it worked well in the dirt and water of an amphibious assault and gave our soldiers a huge advantage on the battlefield over those troops equipped with the K-98. By some estimates, our guys enjoyed a 2-1 advantage over the German and Italian forces they faced, because of that weapon.
A weapon that was developed as a result of mission analysis, requirements generation, and procurement that happened outside of the vocal objections of those hanging on to the past.
